The Three Times Leonardo DiCaprio Almost Died

In interviews, Leonardo DiCaprio has talked about the extreme filming conditions, about sleeping inside dead animals, about eating raw bison, about wading through frozen rivers wearing 100 pounds of fur. But, as DiCaprio revealed in an interview with Wired, his actual life is also pretty damn nuts. It's amazing this guy–whom his friends have named "the person they least want to do extreme adventures with, because I always seem to be very close to being part of a disaster"–is still alive.

That Time With the Shark

A great white jumped into my cage when I was diving in South Africa. Half its body was in the cage, and it was snapping at me ... I sort of fell down to the bottom and tried to lie flat. The great white took about five or six snaps an arm's length away from my head. The guys there said that has never happened in the 30 years they'd been doing it.

That Time the Plane Engine Exploded Midair

Then there was this Delta Airlines flight to Russia. I was in business class, and an engine blew up in front of my eyes. It was right after "Sully" Sullenberger landed in the Hudson. I was sitting there looking out at the wing, and the entire wing exploded in a fireball. I was the only one looking out at the moment this giant turbine exploded like a comet. It was crazy. They shut all the engines off for a couple of minutes, so you're just sitting there gliding with absolutely no sound, and nobody in the plane was saying anything. It was a surreal experience. They started the engines back up, and we did an emergency landing at JFK.

That Time the Parachute Didn't Open

The other one was the skydiving incident. It was a tandem dive. We pulled the first chute. That was knotted up. The gentleman I was with cut it free. We did another free fall for like another 5, 10 seconds. I didn't even think about the extra chute, so I thought we were just plummeting to our death. He pulled the second, and that was knotted up too. He just kept shaking it and shaking it in midair, as all my friends were, you know, what felt like half a mile above me, and I'm plummeting toward earth. [Laughs.] And he finally unravels it in midair. The fun part was when he said, "You're probably going to break your legs on the way down, because we're going too fast now." So after you see your whole life flash in front of your eyes—twice—he says, "Oh, your legs are going to get broken too."

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